“The biggest lie there is”: The Dolly Parton album that disappointed Nashville
When you’ve been with an artist from the start, there’s always a strange, unsettling feeling when they begin to taste a level of success bigger than anticipated. The pride is always there, as is often the case when you see something you love thrive. However, sometimes, the transition from low-level enjoyment to mainstream appeal is difficult to swallow. Dolly Parton knows this better than most.
Parton entered a significant transitionary period the moment she wanted to shoot higher, taking her established community in Nashville to other markets to broaden her movement. Los Angeles was an obvious target to aim for next, and would push her music into more mainstream spaces, so long as she moulded her country feel into something a little more accessible.
At the time, Parton had accrued a modest following of unified music lovers who fell for her straight-up country sound, enjoying how she managed to represent the feel and atmosphere of an entire city. For many, it felt like she understood their little secret, with music that went right to the core of everything that made it great. It was a form of pride, one that took their little world and made it feel bigger.
However, Parton itched for more. She loved her Nashville community, but she also wanted to make an album that supercharged her career, taking her from being a big fish in a small pond to a larger-scale icon. It’s a crossroads most musicians face, and one that’s more difficult when you’ve established yourself in a genre as niche as country, where loyalty thrives but mainstream is seen as a threat.
Therefore, when she released New Harvest … First Gathering, Parton saw the beginnings of everything she had hoped: a step over into other arenas, where others who hadn’t been familiar with her before were suddenly paying attention. But this move upset some factions of her Nashville fanbase, with some criticising her sudden jolt away from what they deemed safe. It was a betrayal.
According to the singer’s former seamstress, Judy Hunt, this had more to do with people misunderstanding Parton’s intentions. Many struggled to grasp the fact that she couldn’t grow larger in Nashville and instead had to move to other places to expand. “It’s a shame she couldn’t do that with Nashville people,” Hunt explained in Dolly. “People who really do care, instead of people who want the money they can make off her.”
“A lot of people don’t want to accept it. They think, ‘She’s just disappointed us,'” she continued. “Especially people who were close to her. Then, a lot of other people have accepted it. I was very sceptical that she’d make it at first. I thought, ‘Gosh, she’s too country.’ But she’s comin’ right along.” In Parton’s eyes, however, although it was a necessary step, it didn’t mean she was moving away from her roots.
In fact, she acknowledged that making a change always comes with a “price”. At the time, she knew some felt she was “leaving country” and that she wasn’t “proud of Nashville” but disregarded it as “the biggest lie there is”. For those who knew and understood Parton, leaving anything she once regarded as her home or family is impossible as it’s the closest thing to her heart. So, in her mind, it was less about leaving people behind and more about taking her soul “wherever I go”.
